Causes Of The Salem Witch Trials

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a series of prosecutions of people who were accused of acts of witchcraft or of being a witch in Salem, Massachusetts through the time period of February 1692 through May 1693. This was a dark time in history as more than 200 prosecutions took place and at least 20 people were killed during this time of fear and hysteria. The accusations began as three girls Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne were accused of witchcraft from other young girls in the community. During this time period, fear of the Devil was common as people in Salem were very devoted to their religion and religious practices. As one of the accused girls, Tituba, confessed to working for the Devil and admitting to being a witch, this caused panic and hysteria as a massive witch hunt took place to find more of these witches. This confession was the main reason behind months and months of fear and mass panic as it triggered more accusations.

It all began in 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, a Puritan town. Ironically, this supposed religious town, put 20 people to death for witchcraft. The invisible crime had made itself prevalent in the town through two girls, Betty Parris, age nine, and her 11 year old cousin Abigail Williams. These two girls, in order to escape punishment for witchcraft, accused two local white women and the slave Tituba (What Caused the Salem Witch Trial Hysteria of 1692?, Background Essay). It was this first accusation, that set forth the next turn of events. From here, the number of accusers grew. Suddenly, everyone’s neighbors became witches and the jails began to overflow. A special court was built to hold trials, however, the judicial system was biased along with the rest of the town. They allowed their set religious beliefs interfere with logical reasoning and evidence. Hence, the bias. The court proved all for not though, when it ordered a mass hanging on September 22, ending the witchcraft epidemic in Salem. To this day, historians still don’t fully understand what caused the hysteria in Salem. Thus, it could only be theorized the causes of such an event. Taking a gander at probability, the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were likely rooted in scapegoating, greed, and bias.

There were many things that caused the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. One of the things that caused the Salem Witch Trials started with Parris’s, the one who experienced these things first, Indian Slave, Tituba. Tituba even admitted to being a witch and said that four women and one man were causing the strange illnesses. Another thing that caused the Salem Witch trials was an accused victim, Abigail Hobbs. She claimed to have seen the devil, which she said made her make a covenant with him, which made her wicked and have the ability to use witchcraft. Also, another thing that caused the Salem witch trials was when Cotten Mather argued that there was witchcraft in the city. He argued that a scripture said that there was witchcraft in the

Several theories exist to explain why the witch hunts occurred. These theories each have contributing factors in the events leading up to the trials in Salem. First, the Ergot Fungus theory discusses the effect of ergot contaminated food on human beings, which clearly relates to evidence shared at the trials. This evidence includes the fact that ergot fungus affected rye, which was a main crop in Salem during the time of the witch trials. “Ergotism is caused by Claviceps purpurea, which affects rye, wheat and other cereal grasses (EF, #1).” “At that time, rye was the staple crop in Salem (EF, #1).” It also states that “ergot-contaminated food can lead to a convulsive disorder characterized by violent muscle spasms vomiting, delusions, hallucinations, crawling sensations on the skin, and a host of other symptoms, all of which, Linda Caporael noted, are present in the records of the Salem witchcraft trials (EF, #1).” Another important piece of information from this theory is that “nearly all of the

Puritans settled in the Massachusetts town of Salem in 1630, with their leader John Winthrop. Winthrop claimed that Salem would be “As a City Upon a Hill,” meaning that the Puritans coming to the New World would set a religious and civilized example among other colonies. However, this wasn’t the case. The Salem Witch Trials were a series of accusations and persecutions due to what was thought to be witchcraft among Salem townspeople. King Philip’s War played a role in the trials. It caused regional mass hysteria which lead to the accusing of witches in Salem. Samuel Parris was the local preacher of Salem and in 1691 he started preaching about the devil and focused more on hell instead of more positive things which also played a role in the crafting of the witch trials. Rich versus poor feuds, the desire to feel around and inspect women, and easily being able to have someone punished by accusing them of being a witch, fueled and motivated the Witch Trials of Salem in 1692.

The Salem Witch Trials occurred in seventeenth century Massachusetts. The small Puritan town of Salem was first burdened with the accusations of witchcraft in January of 1692, according to the article “Salem Witch Trials” on “History.com.” The article also states that two local girls, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams, began having violent fits accompanied with bloodcurdling screams (“Salem Witch Trials). When the girls never healed, the town doctor, William Griggs, was called to the girls’ homes says the article “The 1962 Salem Witch Trials.”

In 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, hysteria broke out throughout the town in an event that later became known as the Salem Witch Trials. They were the largest account of witch hangings ever in America, as 20 women and men were put to death for being accused of practicing witchcraft. Historians have been debating about how these trials were caused. The frenzy in Salem happened because at first, young girls were afraid of punishment and wanted to avoid it so they blamed older women and accused them of being witches. These accusations began to spiral out of control when the religion of the town supported the allegations, which causes paranoia and panic to spread throughout Salem, which blinded the townspeople from clues revealing that the

Since there never was a spurned lover stirring things up in Salem Village, and there is no evidence from the time that Tituba practiced Caribbean black magic, yet these trials and executions actually still took place, how can you explain why they occurred?

In 1692 the Puritans, colonists that believed in the bible, settled in America. They believed in witchcraft, and believed that people who study it should be executed. This led to many people being accused and executed. What made the Salem witch trials of 1692 such a threat and fear to the people of Massachusetts? The Salem witch trial hysteria of 1692 was caused by the fear of being possessed by the devil, by the fear of being accused and what your consequences would be, and lastly the belief of people being witches which was a crime worthy of death.

The Salem Witch Trials were a series of executions done in colonial Massachusetts, where several people were accused of witchcraft between February 1692 and May 1693. These executions included fourteen women, and six men, all of these executions but one were done by hangings. The government and the population in the 1690’s in Massachusetts consisted of strongly puritans. Puritanism was a religious reform movement in the late 16th and 17th centuries that wanted to “purify” the Church of England from the remnants of the Roman Catholic. Puritans were the more extreme protestants, and they thought that the English Reformation did not purify every single thing they had of the Catholic religion. They believed that every individual was directly responsible to God, instead of a priest, etc. For example, a puritan minister called Richard Sibbes said: “The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God; we should neither eat nor sleep, but eat to God and sleep to God and work to God and talk to God, do all to His glory and praise.”

The Salem Witch Trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of accused witches in Massachusetts during the year 1692. It is notorious for being a dark time in American history because 20 innocent people were killed. Today, many people know about the actual outcome of the witch trials; but many people don’t know how the trials even started.

In the year (1692) witch trials held the Salem area hostage people were terrified. People of

The Salem Witch Trials, taking place between February 1692 and May 1693, arose from a period of mass hysteria regarding witchcraft. The puritanical society of New England emphasized a need for a Bible-based society, which caused a fear of the supernatural and gave rise to the false accusations of “witches.” With testimonies of witches rooted in the Old Testament, the idea of witchcraft eventually made its way into the superstitious and everyday Puritan life, and was fueled by the rejection of the group during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

One of the earliest witch hunts in America happened thirty years before the Salem Witch Trials. This witch hunt swept through another colonial New England town in Hartford Connecticut in 1662. In March of 1662 parents John and Bethia Kelly’s 8 year old daughter passed due to an unknown sickness. Their daughter Elizabeth was fine just days before when she came back from a neighbor's house. Looking for any explanation to why this happened to them the mother saw the devils work. John and Bethia were convinced that their daughter was possessed by the neighbor Goody Ayres. The parents testified that Elizabeth became sick after she returned from the neighbor and called out to the father that Goody Ayres was upon her and choked her. After the death of little Elizabeth, accusations of bewitchment grew and fingers were pointed throughout the town. Hysteria grew throughout Hartford, a town where a generation had before witnessed the first witch execution.

The Salem Witch Trials in New England comprised the largest outbreak of witchcraft panic in American history. Historians and scientists have contributed the accusations of witchcraft in the early 1690’s to everything, from disease, religious and political agendas, to harsh weather. It is believed that a better understanding of the cause of the atrocities in Salem, and those like it, may prevent such events from reoccurring. Despite many years of study, however, what caused such panic in New England and the subsequent bizarre accusations against over a hundred and fifty people remains largely speculative.